MUSIC

MUSIC; Annie Lennox's Bittersweet Dreams

By JON PARELES

Published: April 13, 2003

Correction Appended

LONDON—
ANOTHER breakup, another album. When Annie Lennox performs at the Apollo Theater in Harlem tomorrow night, it will be part of the first headlining tour of her solo career and a preview of ''Bare,'' Ms. Lennox's first album of her own songs since ''Diva'' in 1992.

''Bare,'' due for release by Arista on June 10, returns to the 48-year-old Ms. Lennox's truest calling: as a maker of plush, thoughtful and furious songs about intimate betrayal. ''When will you be satisfied?'' she sings in one torchy ballad. ''Not till the hurting time begins.''

Ms. Lennox looked meticulously casual for an interview over croissants and coffee at a bistro near her home in north London. She wore a gray-patterned knit sweater and charcoal pants, with a dark tam hiding all but a wisp of her close-cropped platinum hair. Next to her wristwatch was a red, black and gold beaded bracelet from Jamaica, a keepsake from a trip on which she met Bob Marley's mother. There was a velvety Scots burr in her accent -- she grew up in Aberdeen, Scotland -- and her crescent-shaped eyes flashed as she considered each question.

''At a certain point,'' she said, ''I look back on all the songs and the poetry that I've ever written and it kind of boils down to the same thing. It's scary in a way.''

In the 1980's, as half of Eurythmics with Dave Stewart, Ms. Lennox sang about love as a maze of joys and deceptions, sweet dreams and bleak dissension, setting her sultry voice against cool, dispassionate synthesizer tones. Eurythmics wasn't her first band; she had been with Mr. Stewart in a pop-rock group called the Tourists in the 1970's. But she wrote her first songs for Eurythmics.

''We were looking for something that had a very essential, instant sound to it, very identifiable,'' she said. ''It had a groove that comes from black American soul singing and blues music. You take a very strong backbone there, rhythmically. Then you add atmosphere, you infuse it with European alienation, urban angst if you like. And then on top of that you give it voice with sweetness and sadness and beauty.''

After seven albums and a decade of tours, Eurythmics dissolved. ''Diva'' was released after the band broke up -- at the time, Ms. Lennox and Mr. Stewart couldn't bear to be in the same room -- and the album was filled with songs of self-doubt and recrimination cast as soul ballads. Melding catharsis and consolation, it sold seven million copies worldwide.

Ms. Lennox has not been silent since ''Diva,'' although instead of touring, she chose to raise her two daughters, now 10 and 12, with her husband, the filmmaker Uri Fruchtmann. In 1995 she released an album of other people's songs, ''Medusa,'' which yielded another hit with ''No More 'I Love You's.' '' Four years later she reunited with Mr. Stewart as Eurythmics for an album, ''Peace,'' and a tour. In 2000, she and Mr. Fruchtmann announced that they were divorcing. She started working on ''Bare'' in 2001, a process that lasted more than a year.

''I knew the pain that she was in,'' said Stephen Lipson, her longtime producer. ''There were moments during the sessions that she would say stuff, and the air in the room would become pretty doom-laden. Before I started working with her, there was a long talk with her manager, Simon Fuller, about the idea of really getting into what she was trying to say as opposed to dragging her into a more positive thing. It wasn't up to us, it was up to her, and my thing was that it's not something to fight, it's something to embrace.''

The music on ''Bare'' spurns the upfront staccato rhythms and clipped vocals of most current pop. Its slow songs take their time, harking back to quiet-storm Smokey Robinson and pop standards. ''Loneliness'' reaches for the resonance of U2, while ''Honesty'' is a contrapuntal tour-de-force: behind Ms. Lennox's floating lead vocal, a chorus of Lennoxes questions and amplifies her words while guitar distortion seethes down below. The album's beat is often subdued, cushioned in layers of keyboards, and Ms. Lennox lingers over her melodies. In ''The Saddest Song,'' a hushed backdrop accompanies her as she croons ''I need you'' and pauses for an endless moment before leaping up to continue, ''not.'' There's serenity in her voice as well as sorrow.

Yet the lyrics are suffused with desolation and wrath. In ''Twisted,'' she asks herself, ''How could I believe in this when none of it was true?'' while ''Bitter Pill'' details the ''taste of rage and anger burning me inside.'' In ''Erased,'' she vows to completely forget her ex: ''Nothing ever took place between you and me, yeah, nothing ever happened,'' she decides. ''And if you see me walking down the street, I won't even recognize you.''

Ms. Lennox shied away from describing the songs as direct autobiography. ''Erased,'' she insisted, was more about mortality and impermanence than revenge. As for the album as a whole, she said: ''It's not about what someone did to me. It's more about my own debate or discussion with myself about pretty fundamental issues, existential issues. How one functions in the world. What is of meaning to you? What is of value to you? How do you lift yourself out of negative thinking? How do you function well?''

''It's fact and fiction,'' she added. ''I start with maybe a line of truth or experience or something that I want to say. And then, because of the lyrical meter and rhyme, I have a lexicon of words I can use that rhyme with a particular word. And of course, it's associative again. In one line it's personal. The next line it becomes some invention because it had to be. And then at this point I say it's universal. As long as I make some symbolic metaphorical sense from the beginning to the middle to the end, that's O.K. And it doesn't matter if it's fact or fiction.''

LATELY, Ms. Lennox has been experimenting with photographs: self-portraits. ''I never wanted to be a clotheshorse for anybody,'' she said. ''So I just kind of thought, O.K., I want to make timeless pieces that are not particularly about a fashion trend.''

She and a friend who is a painter and designer, Alan Martin, have been shooting sessions with a digital camera. One stark portrait accompanies this article. Another, a prospective cover for the album, was an elaborate setup in which Ms. Lennox covered her body with mud and then, for artifice, put on false eyelashes and gold platform shoes.

''I rarely know what we're going to do beforehand,'' she said. ''We just make it up as we go along. It's like home cooking. Sometimes we just get into a roll and it gets really exciting. We've become like two little kids talking a funny language about symbolism, metaphor, line, composition, color, texture, space, contrast, emotion, reference, whatever.''

Perhaps it's not too different from songwriting. ''I mean it's all about the me, actually,'' she said, chuckling. ''The me, and more of me, and then there'll be some more of me. And let's have a little bit, for after, of me.'' She was laughing.

Photo: Annie Lennox in a self-portrait. Her new album harks back to Smokey Robinson and beyond. (Annie Lennox)

Correction: April 13, 2003, Sunday An article on Page 25 of Arts & Leisure today about the singer Annie Lennox misidentifies the record label that released her new album, ''Bare.'' It is J Records, not Arista.